International

During the Gulf War, David Fromkin's A Peace to End All Peace became a bestseller, as Americans sought an intelligent, clear overview of the Middle East. Now Fromkin draws upon his expertise in world affairs to explain how the Balkan turmoil is part of a larger drama of American power in the world. He brings a deep historical perspective to this ongoing conflict and offers readers a sense of what's really at stake in American intervention there. To a great extent, Fromkin argues, both sides are still dealing with the aftermath of World War I, when Yugoslavia was carved from the Hapsburg and Ottoman empires (with no resolution of the ethnic strife among its peoples), and America adopted a new world order based on humanitarian ideals.

In his trademark clear and elegant prose, Fromkin explores military power in the world today and defines the new paths American leaders must follow to contend with such ruthless adversaries as Yugoslavian President Slobodan Milosevic. Addressing a wide range of enduring issues for America and the world, Kosovo Crossing is the one book every reader must have in order to understand what is happening in the Balkans today, and what the repercussions will be in the new millennium.

David Fromkin's instant analysis arrived in bookshelves less than two months after the completion of NATO's 11-week air campaign against the Serbian government led by Slobodan Milosevic. As such, it deals much more with the historical factors that led to Operation Allied Forces than with the military action itself. In addition to providing a very broad overview to about three millennia of Balkan history, Fromkin tracks the growth of the United States as a world power in the 20th century and its mixed record of interventionism, then shows how those two tracks collided in the aftermath of the First World War, and again shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union and its satellite regimes in the late 1980s. "The positions taken by President Clinton in the 1990s," Fromkin argues, "are those staked out for the United States by President Wilson eighty years ago." He goes on to assert that those positions, which require the United States to support Eastern European "self-determination" in principle but oppose actual nationalist movements that it fears would undermine the region's political stability, have not--and likely never will--succeed in the long run. "Serbia's apparent surrender in June 1999 was a triumph for the United States. But it was the easy part," Fromkin concludes. But ending the war is not the same thing as bringing about peace. "It may be a long time, if ever, before we are justified in breaking open the champagne." --Ron Hogan

In the heart of China's Sichuan province, tucked away amid the terraced hills of the Yangtze River valley, lies the remote town of Fuling. Like many other small cities in this vast and ever-evolving country, Fuling is shifting gears and heading down a new path, one of change and vitality, tension and reform, disruption and growth.

Its position at the crossroads came into sharp focus when Peter Hessler arrived as a Peace Corps volunteer, marking the first time in more than half a century that the city had an American resident. Hessler taught English and American literature at the local college, but it was his students who taught him about the ways of Fuling -- and about the complex process of understanding that takes place when one is immersed in a radically different society. Poignant, thoughtful, funny, and enormously compelling, River Town is an unforgettable portrait of a city that, much like China itself, is seeking to understand both what it was and what it someday will be.

In 1996, 26-year-old Peter Hessler arrived in Fuling, a town on China's Yangtze River, to begin a two-year Peace Corps stint as a teacher at the local college. Along with fellow teacher Adam Meier, the two are the first foreigners to be in this part of the Sichuan province for 50 years. Expecting a calm couple of years, Hessler at first does not realize the social, cultural, and personal implications of being thrust into a such radically different society. In River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze, Hessler tells of his experience with the citizens of Fuling, the political and historical climate, and the feel of the city itself.

"Few passengers disembark at Fuling ... and so Fuling appears like a break in a dream--the quiet river, the cabins full of travelers drifting off to sleep, the lights of the city rising from the blackness of the Yangtze," says Hessler. A poor city by Chinese standards, the students at the college are mainly from small villages and are considered very lucky to be continuing their education. As an English teacher, Hessler is delighted with his students' fresh reactions to classic literature. One student says of Hamlet, "I don't admire him and I dislike him. I think he is too sensitive and conservative and selfish." Hessler marvels,

You couldn't have said something like that at Oxford. You couldn't simply say: I don't like Hamlet because I think he's a lousy person. Everything had to be more clever than that ... you had to dismantle it ... not just the play itself but everything that had ever been written about it.

Hessler's writing is lovely. His observations are evocative, insightful, and often poignant--and just as often, funny. It's a pleasure to read of his (mis)adventures. Hessler returned to the U.S. with a new perspective on modern China and its people. After reading River Town, you'll have one, too. --Dana Van Nest